


Business as usual

by Mari_UC



Series: BirdFlash - Young Justice [8]
Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, artemis pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-11
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-08-22 05:26:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16591670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mari_UC/pseuds/Mari_UC
Summary: Seeing Conner fly through the boats and containers after their supposedly easy target blocked Connor’s punch with a finger and sent him flying about 500 yards across the shipyard with the flicker of his wrist, really gave Artemis a sense of sudden clarity.She realized they were totally and royally screwed.





	Business as usual

**Author's Note:**

> Hello again. 
> 
> So, time to continue the story. This one is a short fic that takes place a short time after Homework. It’s pretty much a little advance on the story. Nothing major, just Artemis POV and a small recap of the stuff that’s happened since, from her perspective. 
> 
> Also, Berserk Wally!

Seeing Conner fly through the boats and containers after their supposedly _easy target_ blocked Connor’s punch with a finger and sent him flying about 500 yards across the shipyard with the flicker of his wrist, really gave Artemis a sense of sudden clarity.

She realized they were totally and royally screwed.

Kaldur was the first one to react, charging towards the guy (this 5 ft _short_ , skinny dude they’d been following, and who they’d been mentally calling the _guy_ ) trying to keep his distance.

‘ _Everyone, remember the mission, we’re here to be the distraction. Artemis, let’s try to keep them off-balance and focused on us. Miss M, you’re our look out, get up high and keep your eyes on the whole place; this is about to get crowded soon and we’re going to need an escape route. KF, check on Superboy, we need our powerhouse back if we want to stand a chance here. We need to give Robin enough time to get our information. Getting those codes to the League is priority Alpha._ ’

Artemis immediately jumped to the top of a container and fired four consecutive arrows. Two thugs were knocked down by the arrows, but the explosion did nothing to their leader. She took a couple jumps back to try and keep some distance from the fight.

If he was _this_ strong, she really needed to avoid close quarters.

‘ _Who **is** this guy?’ _KF asked the question on everyone’s mind. ‘ _No idea. I don’t recognize him from the Batcave or the League databases_ ’ Rob’s answer came through the mental link.

‘ _He is Dead Meat._ ’ Conner’s growl came and half a second later, he _crash-landed_ on top of him. KF arrived almost at the same time and pretty soon the fist fight was on.

Kal and Connor were focused on the guy, while Artemis and Wally got busy cutting through what seemed like an endless supply of henchmen.

‘ _Artemis,_ _watch out!_ ’ Megan’s mental scream made her roll to the side, as three crates levitated to her right blocking a barrage of bullets. She took three arrows and covered the thugs in plastic goo. Ok, technically it’s high-density polyurethane foam, but… yeah, that’s too long. Plastic goo it is.

‘ _Thanks, M,_ ’ she called looking up to the slightly distorted air that showed the hidden Martian. She felt the smile though the link, before a groan and a small earthquake caught her attention. _The guy_ had grabbed Kaldur and used him to ram Wally and Conner into a crane. She threw a sequence of exploding, pressure and _goo_ arrows; and even a couple bolas to try and slow the Guy down, but he just looked at her as if she was a simple annoyance.

She felt her blood boil and was about to yell something at him, when he grabbed Wally and threw him at her, like he was a log. She rolled to the side and threw a _goo_ arrow to try and lessen the impact of the fall, but Wally still took a nasty hit to his head. ‘ _Wally!_ ’ Artemis didn’t realized the mistake of yelling Wally’s name through the mental link, until she heard Dick’s worried voice in her head. ‘ _What happened? What’s going on guys?_ ’

‘ _We’re having our asses handed to us, that’s what’s happening. What’s the ETA on that intel?_ ’ Conner asked and Artemis had to agree with him, even with all the Team, sans Rocket and Zee, they were taking heavy hits from this guy. Conner was limping, Kaldur looked worried, Megan was levitating a lot of crates trying to create both a distraction and a cover from up high, while keeping her eyes open for a possible escape route. And in less than five minutes, Artemis had already gone through half her quiver.

‘ _I’m already downloading the codes, shouldn’t take more than a few seconds,_ ’ he answered before immediately asking ‘ _KF? Are you ok?_ ’ And Artemis knew Wally’s condition would mess with Dick’s ability to function properly, but silence would probably be worst, so she answered quickly.

‘ _He’s out. He’s probably fine. He’s breathing, he just took a nasty hit on the head._ ’ She informed the team, and again, she could feel the worry through the link. Or maybe she was projecting. She wasn’t sure. ‘ _Artemis, take KF to the Bioship and bring her here. As soon as Robin’s out, we’re getting away._ ’

She nodded at Kaldur’s orders, but before she could do much of anything the Guy was standing next to her.

“You’re annoying.”

She didn’t had time to react before a hand smashed against her temple and a flare of pain exploded through her head.

-_-_-_-_-

“-ast chance.”

_Wh-_

Artemis opened her eyes feeling her head burning on the side and looked around the room. Her teammates were tied in the middle of the shipyard and the _easy target_ was currently grabbing Robin by the neck. Choking him. She tried to stand up, but noticed manacles on her wrists and ankles binding her to the floor.

_Shit._

She turned to the rest of the guys and noticed the inhibitor collars.

_Double shit._

“Wouldn’t _you_ like to know?” Robin’s voice made her turn back to the front. His voice was rough and it was obvious the lack of oxygen was starting to get to him. The Guy didn’t like the answer, so he punched Robin on the chest, making him double in pain and causing Wally and Conner to growl at him.

Artemis was a little surprised noticing she was growling as well. Dick coughed a couple times trying to catch his breath again and the guy turned to Kaldur. “You’re the _Capitán_. The leader of your little group, _Si_?” he asked with a thick Hispanic accent. 

“Yes,” Kaldur replied, holding his glare. “Well, Captain,” he said “Either one of you tell me what I want to know, or I crush his throat,” he threatened grabbing Robin by his neck.

Artemis wanted to scoff at that. They’d gotten out of far worst situation than this, all they needed was a little time. She started working on her own escape route, taking in the entire situation they were on. “We won’t talk,” said Kaldur probably working on his own plan and trying to give everyone a little more time to come up with something.

They were all chained to each other, Conner to one end and Robin to the other. Artemis was next to Robin, and Wally was to his right. They were all awake. And all the inhibitors were turned on. She noticed Robin and her were not wearing anything, so they were the Team’s best choice to come up with an exit strategy, as the others would be zapped whenever they’ll make a move.

So, they needed the bad guy to focus on anyone other than them. Which explained Kaldur’s word choice, probably trying to- “ _You won’t_. Meaning, you all know what he stole,” he said and Artemis bit her lip, waiting for the guy to take the bait. However, he grinned sadly at Conner “ _Tsk-tsk. Capitán_ , your carelessness just cost you a teammate.”

_Wh-_

“What!?” Wally shrieked as Artemis watched frozen as the guy raised Robin and started pressing his throat making Robin trash and whimper against him, and Artemis couldn’t take her eyes of Robin’s face, because… he was scared.

He was…

_God… he’s not acting… He’s really…_

“Stop, no, wait, I’ll…” Artemis didn’t found what Wally wanted to say, because the Guy closed his fist savagely and Robin’s body stopped trashing, he went limp with his jaw open and the whiteouts of his mask clear and unmoving.

_…_

_He..._

“NO!”

Artemis’ ears were ringing as her mind struggled to process what she was seeing.

Robin was…

Dick was…

The Guy dropped Robin’s body and it fell on an odd angle, his legs moving to the side and his head turned back, showing his throat and the purple mark of his fingers…

“Now, let’s see if you like _her_ better …” Artemis couldn’t take her eyes from Robin’s still body and barely noticed the hand on her hair. It wasn’t until she was pulled up from the floor that she started taking in the situation around her and…

“Rob…”

Wally. Wally who was looking at Robin’s body.

Artemis felt her own throat whimper looking at Wally’s face, even with the googles on and his cowl up, Artemis could see Wally was struck. She saw as Wally tried to stand up, to move closer to Rob, only to fall on his face because of the chains, and saw as his body grew still “KF?” she sobbed softly trying to calm him.

_We… We can’t afford to lose our heads right now._

_We…_

_We need too…_

_Rob… Dick. Oh God, Dick…_

Wally’s body started shaking and Artemis though for a second he was crying, but then she noticed the lighting and the growling when Wally looked at the guy currently holding her by the hair.

In that instant, Artemis remembered a conversation she’d had with Ollie.

Back when the team was starting and her feelings for Wally were a mess of longing, anger and irritation. She’d thought about putting an arrow through Wally’s leg and Ollie had laughed, until he noticed she might not be joking.

‘ _Piece of advice, young one. Speedsters are easygoing. They’re friendly and out-spoken and all-in-all good guys. But, you don’t wanna piss off a speedster. Ever. I remember this one time, we were going against Zoom. He’d taken Iris and Flash asked the League for help. Long story short, he took her and made Barry believe she was dead. I’ll never forget it, the way Flash’s eyes lit up with the lightning… The anger… It took Superman, Wonder Woman **and** Hal go all in to stop him from killing the bastard. It almost wasn’t enough._’

Artemis had always believed Ollie was exaggerating. I mean, yes, by logic, a speedster is a strong meta-human. It was basic physics. Anything, with enough speed, accumulates enough force to do basically anything. So, logically, speedsters are strong. Deadly, even. But, the speedsters are Wally, and Barry and Jay.

And they’re all loveable goofballs…

They’re… _them_.

Now, though. The man looking up to her right now… he wasn’t the Wally she knew. The animalistic growl, the lightning crossing his face and the dark _hate_ in Wally’s eyes. For the first time in her life, even with Sportsmaster as her father, Artemis was able to see _Death_ in someone.

Pure, simple, brutal. Death, covered in lighting with yellow skin and red eyes.

“YOU!” Wally’s voice boomed marked with the trails of lightning around him made it sound potent and deep, like a thundering boom, sending a wave of heat through her body. Artemis watched with an increased sense of dread as Wally’s gaze fixed on the guy and his skin started to vibrate, despite the inhibitor collar beeping on his neck.

“Boy. Stop that,” the Guy said from behind Artemis, and she felt a dark sense of pleasure at noticing he was scared of Wally. She looked down to Dick’s body.

 _Good_.

“You killed him…” Wally said again with the dark thundering voice.

“Stop it. Now,” the Guy repeated, but Wally kept vibrating, going faster with each second and his inhibitor collar started to crackle and discharge electricity, but Wally seemed unaffected by it, as he started to yell at him “You killed him! You… I’m… YOU’RE DEAD. YOU…”

Frozen in her spot, Artemis saw how the blue electricity coming from the collar started to feed the yellow streaks of Wally’s lightning, increasing his speed and the sound of crackling energy coming from him. The vibrations kept increasing and Wally stood up, the chains falling straight through his wrists, as his body vibrated fast enough to be intangible. Wally raised a hand and touched the inhibitor collar, making it explode against his neck.

With the full access of his speed, Artemis felt how Wally’s body started to distort the air flow around him, creating a small tornado without even moving a muscle. She felt the waves of hot air emanating from him.

“I’m gonna kill you,” Wally stated with a deep calm voice and Artemis was certain he wasn’t kidding. Wally _was_ going to kill this guy. However, she didn’t had time to think about the implications of that statement, as the world around her changed in the span of a second.

The first thing she noticed was the wave of heat on her right side and the air pushing her aside. Then she noticed Wally wasn’t in front of her, but her brain couldn’t even wonder about it before she was distracted by a sound, a massive crash behind her, and she turned to see that the Guy, who was half a second ago holding her head, was now half rammed against a container and it was Wally who was standing behind her, still vibrating in place.

She looked up and noticed the _hate_ coming of in waves from his body.

The Guy growled and ran to Wally coming with a straight punch. Artemis watched with horrified fascination as Wally simply raised a hand and blocked his punch, before grabbing him, rotating on his axis a couple times like a top and throwing him back against the same container.

The same guy who’d stopped Conner with the flicker of a finger.

For the next two or three seconds all Artemis could see was the aftermath of Wally’s anger, as different containers all around them were trashed and the Guy was sent through each and every one of them. It wasn’t until Wall threw him right next to her, that she was able to couple the images of the fight with Wally’s previous statement.

Only when she was able to see the amount of damage Wally had done in three seconds, the idea of _Wally killing this guy_ fit with the reality of what was happening.

The guy’s face was completely broken, bleeding profusely from his mouth. Both his legs were broken in several pieces and one of his arms was practically ripped from the shoulder. He was completely broken down.

The guy the _whole team_ had had a hard time _touching_ …

The guy that had swatted Conner like a mosquito…

 _He_ laid bruised and broken by Wally. He was about to be _killed_ by Wally.

“KF!” Kaldur’s voice boomed from the side and he was looking as scared as Artemis was feeling right now. Wally ignored him and straddled him, putting his hand on the guy’s throat before vibrating it through it.

He was going to kill him.

Wally was going to break his throat, like he’d done to Dick.

Wally was about to _kill_ someone.

“Kid, Stop! He’s down…,” pleaded Kaldur from the side. But Artemis saw in Wally’s eyes, that he wasn’t stopping. He wasn’t leaving him alive. She wanted to tell him to stop, she wanted to yell and plead and beg him not to cross this line. But she was transfixed, looking at Wally. He was…

“Wally!” came a voice from her side. A soft calming male voice. Artemis brain was still lagging behind as she saw Dick standing up and facing Wally, who was looking at him as if he couldn’t quite get what was happening.

“Wally stop, please. I’m fine… I was just playing possum. I…” Dick said coming closer to him, and slowly moving to touch Wally’s cheek.

And as if he had a hidden off switch, Wally stopped vibrating and the lighting and heat subsided. “D?” Wally sobbed and Dick started saying sweet nothings to his ear, repeating that he was ok, that he was sorry and rubbing circles in his back.

They stood like that for a couple seconds and then Wally took a step back and put both his hands on Dick’s chin, like trying to convince himself this was real.

Artemis felt the fear and pain of the last couple seconds burn away from her blood as she sighed looking up at the sky, her brain finally catching up with the events.

Dick’s alive, he just faked his throat being broken (and how the hell did he do that, is something she’s definitively going to find out about).

Wally’s no longer going psycho or _… whatever_ that was.

The guy’s alive, they’re all _alive_.

She sighed again gaining control of her emotions again.

Seeing Wally softly caressing Robin’s chin and looking at him with that stupidly-in-love look, Artemis felt an uncomfortable shiver on her own face and cleared her throat. “Well,” she blurted out raising an eyebrow at the lovebirds “If you two are quite done scaring _the living crap_ out of us, could you please…” she raised her restrains and pointed to the rest of them. You know, their Team, currently sporting inhibitor collars and chains on legs and arms.

She felt the tingling subside when they separated and Wally looked at her sheepishly moving to try help her out of the chains. Kaldur spoke next to her. “Robin. The intel?”

The not-dead-after-all bird smiled “Already being uploaded to the Watchtower,” he answered with a grin.

“So. The mission was a success,” said Megan with a hopeful tone. Robin just cackled and grinned at him. “Seriously doubt Batman’s gonna see it that way.” Artemis couldn’t help but agree with the Boy Wonder, the Team had been captured, they turned a covert op into a brawl in a shipyard and Wally almost murdered a guy…

A guy the League and the Team didn’t knew anything about…

Yeah, they were getting individual performance reports.

Again.

_Perfect._

-_-_-_-_-                                                                                                                                              

Sitting at Mt. Justice’s living room hearing Conner retell the mission to Zee and Raquel, Artemis allowed herself a second to think about what had happened these past few months.

Wally and Dick’s relationship had been a major source of headaches and heartbreak for the Team since they’d decided to come out about… five months ago, actually. It was five months ago, that Wally came out to the Team… and she really doesn’t like to think about the circumstances surrounding _that_ particular scenario.

But he’d come out and Artemis couldn’t help but feel a little relieved. Because after figuring out her feelings for Wally and noticing they weren’t reciprocated, she’d felt a little scorned and her relationship with Wally had been hurt because of it. Knowing it wasn’t because of something going on with _her_ , but rather just Wally’s sexuality had helped her take the blow of rejection without hurting her self-esteem… _too much_.

Having a secret boyfriend at GA to fool around in between missions and school had also helped with the whole self-esteem thing.

Not that she thought they would work out perfectly… they had “came out” to the public as well, but she didn’t - _couldn’t_ – tell him about _her_ , about _the Team_.

It…

She couldn’t and it was bound to blow up on her face one way or another…

Anyway, back to the point, Wally came out. Robin came out, and then two weeks later, Robin revealed himself as Dick Grayson to the Team.

‘ _We’ll laugh about this…,_ ’ the little asshole.

But with that, the pieces of the puzzle just _fit._

Of course, the pair of idiots belonged to each other. It was too fucking perfect not to see it.

It had taken them horrifyingly, embarrassingly too long to get together.

They’d danced around each other for _weeks_ , before (finally!) getting their heads out of their asses and started dating. Seeing them dating had been the final nail on Artemis’ crush on Wally. And she felt really ashamed that it had taken her until that moment to really force herself to put her feelings to rest.

Unfair to her boyfriend too.

She hadn’t realized she still had unresolved feelings for Wally, but it wasn’t until she saw the way he looked at Dick messing around. _That_ look on his eyes, Artemis had surprised herself finding out that it didn’t bothered her, she didn’t felt jealous, she felt a warm sensation on her belly that radiated over her body and she smiled softly at him… that is, until Wally walked up to Dick and kissed him, making her tingle all over and scuff, leaving them alone.

That had been one of the things she hated about Dick and Wally, because with Megan and Conner the PDA was kept as a minimum, but Dick was over-expressive and Wally was an asshole, so of course they’d taken to every opportunity to annoy her: touching hands, making out loudly, _moaning._

God, the first time she’d heard Dick moan she thought she’d die of embarrassment. It had taken all day to get the ghost of the sound out of her brain.

And then, after suffering through the _lovebird_ phase, just when the pair of idiots were starting to settle on being a couple, Kid Stupid decides to go to a fucking _straight camp_ and dump Dick.

Of course, she – and the Team – didn’t knew about _that_ when it happened. _No. Why would they tell them?_

The pair of idiots had let the Team in the dark; they let them prepare Dick’s birthday party… the first one since they found out his identity. But they didn’t tell anyone they’d broken up, so Meg, Zee and Conner made all the food, Kaldur and Artemis decorated the place, and then, they had to hear from _Flash_ and _Batman_ that the pair would not come.

Artemis called Wally and nearly ripped his head off when he told him he’d dumped Dick.

And then, radio silence.

Two weeks of radio silence from _both_ sides.

Until the day they heard the news of Robin taking the Batmobile and going _apeshit_ on Gotham’s criminals.

Two _more weeks_ later, Wally shows up and tells them the whole story.

It still infuriates Artemis to know that it was _Roy fucking Harper_ who kept a cool head and managed to calm _her_ down, preventing her from going after Wally’s parents and _shove their prejudice_ up their asses. Preferably with an arrow.

Then, they came back to the Team and they are still acting _weird_. Gravitating around each other but forcing themselves to keep some distance. Dick is, at least. Wally’s just acting like an over excited puppy trying to get a treat from his master. In Dick’s defense he hadn’t taken advantage of Wally’s behavior. He’d been kind and he’d tried to open up to him again. Unsuccessfully.

That is, until a couple days ago, when Roy barged in, dragged Wally out saying something about a hospital and then the next morning Dick had ran off, _to_ _help a friend._ Whatever _that_ had been about (and Artemis was still trying to figure it out) it had brought Dick and Wally closer together.

Which brings them to today.

With Dick looking at Wally sleep in the couch with a weird mix of worry and awe after the speedster went _medieval_ on a seemingly invincible enemy because he thought Dick had died.

“Did you know he could do that?” came a voice next to her. She turned around and looked at Conner, who was looking at Dick intently. Kaldur, Megan, Zee and Raquel were also in the room, the last two hearing the retelling of the mission.

“Which part?”, replied Dick with a scoff “To be able to gather speed even though he’s wearing an inhibitor collar, to destroy said collar by touching it, or to toss around a super-powered villain neither of you could touch, until nearly kill him?” he recounted looking at Wally worried.

“Uhm… All of the above?” Raquel asked and Dick raised an eyebrow at her, before turning again to look at Wally’s sleeping form.

He’d fallen asleep as soon as he entered the bioship, and then he’d barely managed to get on the couch, only staying awake to make sure Dick stayed close to him and resting his head on his legs. He’d fallen asleep there and two hours later Dick was still serving as a makeshift pillow.

“Seriously, you should’ve seen it. That was impressive. Scary, but impressive,” said Conner looking at Raquel, and Artemis had to agree.

“He’s a speedster,” she said looking at the sleeping form, before she noticed everyone was looking at her, not following her train of thought.

She told them Ollie’s story. “Flash went berserk after thinking his wife was dead, I think that’s what happened today,” she finished.

They all looked shocked and disbelieving, because Flash was _Barry._ But then again Wally was _Wally_ , and he’d still managed to look like Death incarnate.

“ _Berserk Wally_. Is that really a thing?” Conner asked looking at them, and then Zee started to grin as she looked at Dick “So. A speedster goes berserk when their wife’s in danger. Yeah, that checks out.”

Dick’s ears grew red and he made an indignant sound but as he attempted to moved, Wally protested in his sleep, and Dick froze in place, putting his hand back on Wally’s hair and easing him back into sleep.

“Oh yeah. Definitively, wife material,” Artemis said sharing a laugh with the girls, while Dick spluttered indignantly but didn’t tried to move again. Artemis, Megan and Zee had all laughed at that, but shared a knowing look.

It wouldn’t take Dick more than a couple days before he’s officially _taken. Again._

_Finally._

And quite frankly, if the outcome of this mission is an end to the UST and pinning looks, then it’s quite the successful mission in her book.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Birthday Wally West!!!
> 
> According to YJ canon, today (Nov. 11) is Wally's birthday! 
> 
> To celebrate, I'll be posting two stories today, the next one should be up in about 5-6 hours. It's a short-ish, multiple POV (Wally & Roy & Dick) story.


End file.
